I probably mentioned this before, but I'm having a brain moment.

I'll be continuing AppImages for Benben and XQATool after all. The user experience is too valuable to me, even if the AppImage dev is disagreeable. But, I'll be building them on Slackware 15.0 going forward, so the glibc version required will go up slightly. This should impact almost no one.

Not sure if I'll be able to do AppImages for Aika since it's entirely plugin based...

#benben #aika

I was intending this to be a blog post, but I guess it'll be a long Fedi post instead since I have a large char limit on my instance :-P Time to explain what I've been doing lately!

Basic, new music player: "Aika". I've named it after the character in Agent Aika because I like that anime and I'm just a lewd girl like that. If you know me well, you should not be surprised. Ask me who my Reika program is named after sometime...

Anyway, Aika is NOT a replacement for #Benben (that ain't going away, I love it too much). I gotta emphasize that. Benben will continue. Aika is simply another option for people. This one is special in that the UI is entirely based around #ZeroMQ sockets. So imagine having a local player, running like you see here, but then you can securely connect additional "Remote UIs" to it over a network. These can just connect/disconnect whenever you need, however many you want, and Aika will just keep doing its thing. Kinda like MPD, but easier to use, and you always have a local interface like you see here, never just an invisible process in the background. I call these "Remote UIs". Extremely useful for someone like me who goes around the house to multiple computers while wearing Bluetooth headphones... but it could technically also stream the audio over the network in the future, too. Anyway, I call this ZeroMQ UI stuff the "Remote UI Protocol", and it's Aika's main special thing.

Also, unlike Benben, this one will allow you to add and remove files while it's running through a built-in file browser. So whereas Benben was designed to be like a super sexy version of mpg123 from the start, Aika will be more like a terminal version of Audacious. Sorta. It'll still have its own feel.

Oh, and Aika uses plugins so that support for audio formats, playlist formats, backends, etc. can be changed without changing Aika itself (herself?). So that's another difference. They're just .so files.

The video here just shows a temporary UI that I'm using while I build out the Remote UI Protocol and get things working. It'll look different and more complete in time. This UI here is not yet a true Remote UI, it's entirely local and built into Aika (the "Local UI"), but it is using the Remote UI Protocol over ZeroMQ internally while I design it. Once I have that protocol finished and implemented, I'll convert this Local UI to not use ZeroMQ for some things (for latency reasons), then implement a true example Remote UI that mimics Benben's interface and can run on an entirely separate machine (even across the world if you want).

Lastly, Aika is written in Object #Pascal, not #CommonLisp. So whereas Benben has a 106mb binary (uncompressed, give or take), Aika currently has a 900kb binary. Whereas Benben uses 133 mb of RAM at runtime to play the Quake 2 soundtrack in FLAC format, Aika currently uses 5mb. Also, Aika has been using about half to one quarter less CPU than Benben so far.

It'll be quite a while until Aika is ready for a v0.1.0 release, but I've got the beginnings going on here. The code will be a bit messy at first until the protocol designs solidify, the UI is very incomplete, there's no resampling yet, and it crashes/deadlocks sometimes... but it's at least able to play albums in FLAC format right now ​​ https://fossil.cyberia9.org/aika/

As for Benben.. I blasted through the milestones for v1.0.0 a lot quicker than I expected, so expect it out sooner than later. Maybe mid summer.

EDIT: Oh, and Aika is specifically targeting any POSIX-compatible OS. I'm actually testing things fairly regularly on #Haiku to ensure it works there in particular.

Heads up: I've moved a number of my Fossil repos off of chiselapp. That site is just too unstable anymore, and they haven't moved* to the newer Fossil versions that block scrapers. Here's a blog post describing all of the new links: https://remilia.sdf.org/blog/2026-03-30-a.html

This includes the official site for Benben! It's now at https://fossil.cyberia9.org/benben/

*that I know of, anyway - I can't access it to even check

#benben #xqatool

Well, the #ListenBrainz integration in #Benben is a bit smarter now. If Benben goes to submit something to it, and it can't 'cause of a network error or similar, then it will store the submission and try again later. This functionality is in the trunk code in the repository. I've also updated the manual to describe how ListenBrainz integration works in Benben.

EDIT: And as of a few minutes ago, Benben also submits MusicBrainz IDs for the Release, Recording, and Artist if they're present in the track metadata.

https://fossil.cyberia9.org/benben/

https://fossil.cyberia9.org/benben/uv/benben-latest-manual.html

​​ Happy to be able to participate in this week's This Week in Matrix and see #Benben mentioned!

https://matrix.org/blog/2026/02/27/this-week-in-matrix-2026-02-27/

Heads up 2: Reika has been updated to v0.0.4 to fix an issue with building Lisp software. You'll want to grab this update to fix building #Benben and #XQATool.

https://fossil.cyberia9.org/reika/
https://fossil.cyberia9.org/reika/file?name=NEWS&ci=trunk

Also, Benben now uses the newer Cyberia 9 Fossil repos in its Reika project file. You'll want to do an rm -rf deps/ inside your Benben folder then reika update to grab the new ones (since Reika isn't that smart yet).

https://fossil.cyberia9.org/benben/

I updated the instructions for building #Benben. Now that it uses my Reika build tool, it should be much easier for people to build, especially non-Lispers.

https://chiselapp.com/user/MistressRemilia/repository/benben/wiki?name=Building+Benben

So, #Benben can now change your status message on #Matrix if you want ​​ This is implemented in the current trunk code in the repository. Here's some info:

* Your configuration file needs a new section. This is documented in the manual already. It'll also check that your perms don't have read/write/execute bits set for group and world at startup, and warn you if they do.
* When you start Benben, it will grab your current status message. Then, when you exit Benben cleanly (i.e. not using ctrl-c or when it crashes), it will restore the status message you had when you first started Benben.
* Your online presence (online/offline/whatever) is not changed, just the message.
* After a song has played a minimum of 10 seconds, and the song is 15 seconds or longer, it will change your status message to "Now playing in Benben: <title or filename>". It'll use the filename (specifically the basename of the filename, not the full path) for things like MIDIs. Strings longer than 255 characters are truncated.
* There's a --no-matrix CLI option that temporarily and completely disables Matrix integration. Alternatively, just don't put matrix stuff in your config file.
* Obviously not all clients show your status message. FluffyChat does, but I don't think Element does.

No extra external library dependencies were added, just my CL-RemiMatrix Lisp library. Reika will pull this in automatically at build time. Be sure to do reika force-update before building.

https://chiselapp.com/user/MistressRemilia/repository/benben/